A 21-year-old man in a ski mask was arrested on Monday afternoon just blocks away from the Republican National Convention after police said a firearm was found hidden in the large tactical backpack he was carrying.
The suspect was spotted by U.S. Capitol Police around 1 p.m., “looking suspicious, wearing a ski mask and a large tactical backpack in the street,” the Milwaukee Police Department said in a statement to Fox News.
Officers “performed a subject stop, and it was determined that the suspect was concealing a firearm in his backpack,” the department said. The man did not have a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Wisconsin or any other state, it added.
ADVERTISEMENT
Charges were pending on Tuesday, subject to review by the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security referred The Daily Beast to the Milwaukee Police Department, which did not immediately respond to an after-hours request for comment on Tuesday.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the district attorney’s office for further information.
Citing a source in federal law enforcement, a Fox News journalist reported on Tuesday evening that the man had been caught carrying an AK-47 pistol, a full magazine, and a mask of the Ghostface killer from the horror movie Scream.
The arrest took place a day before a man allegedly armed with knives was shot and killed just outside the convention’s perimeter in downtown Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the suspect was killed by five police officers from Columbus, Ohio, who’d been deployed to deal with potential demonstrations.
The out-of-state officers fired on the suspect after he lunged, a knife in each hand, at another individual on the street, Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman told the newspaper. The suspect and the other individual had been in the midst of an altercation when police intervened, Norman said.
The shooting took place less than a mile from the security perimeter surrounding the Fiserv Forum, where the bulk of the convention’s activities are taking place.
Separately on Tuesday, a woman affiliated with the left-wing protest group Code Pink was arrested outside a convention-related breakfast event at a local hotel after tangling with Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI).
Code Pink said in a statement to The Daily Beast that the woman, a Palestinian campaign organizer, was “intentionally bumped into by a bald, white member of Congress while he tried to shove past her.” It said she had been arrested on false charges.
The congressman said in his own statement that he had been “assaulted by what appeared to be a member of the pro-Hamas group CODEPINK” while waiting in line for breakfast. “This appears to be an incident of political violence and I will never tolerate this,” he added. “Regardless of the severity of the violence, political violence is political violence.”
